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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

"Grand PhD"

Yup. There's such a thing as a "Grand PhD", if you believe the claims of one "Prof Dr" H. Sandhu, the Chief Executive Officer of the bogus "Irish International University", which was blogged here recently (and here a while back). Thanks to Idlan who did some further serious digging here, we now know that not only does this Mr Sandhu have a "Grand PhD" from Belgium, he possesses a Certified DBA (Oxford) and an Euro MBA (Cambridge) - all issued by his very own dubious institutions no doubt.

With all this outlandish claims and fancy college names such as Oxbridge College, and Irish International University (which if you haven't realised by now, doesn't exist in Ireland), I sometimes wonder if the "victims" of these institutions i.e., the "innocent" students seeking further education and life-long learning are really victims, or are instead willing and interested parties in this game of deception.

If anything, the students might be learning the footsteps of this Mr H. Sandhu on how creating bogus credentials and outlandish titles might actually make you some decent money and get you places - including hobnobbing with the rich and famous like some deputy ministers. If that is the case, do they deserve our sympathy?

Was for example, one Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim, UMNO Putera's chief who proudly paraded his Masters in Business Administration from a certain "prestigious" Preston University ("one of the oldest universities in the United States"), which was found out to be bogus, deserving of our sympathy or contempt and ridicule?

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

One of the famous alumnus of Irish International University is Dato' Dr Lim Wee-Chai,CEO of Top Glove Corporation Bhd

http://www.cnbcasia.com/abla2005/finalist3.shtmDato's Dr Lim, Wee-Chai, aged 47, a Malaysian citizen, is the Executive Chairman and founder of Top Glove Group of Companies. The Group was established in 1991 and was listed in Bursa Malaysia (KLSE) on 27 March 2001.

He obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours in Physics in 1982 from University Malaya and a Master of Business Administration in 1985 from Sul Ross State University in Texas, USA. He also earned his Doctorate in Business Administration from the Irish International University, London in 2001.

The whole operation is so obviously a con job. Getting degrees with minimal work, just like someone offering you millions over the Internet by asking you to first transfer some money into their account.

Yet there are so many willing takers or suckers (but again, are they really suckers or victims - motivated by greed, ego, and fraud?), willing to be conned.

In this case of having easy degrees in exchage for a sum of cash, there are many willing egomaniac buyers (not suckers or victims themselves) - who have lots of easy money and want to add something at the beginning (like maybe Dato', Dr, Prof, etc.) and end of their names (like maybe PhD, DSc, PISS, etc.) to fool and impress the real suckers out there in our society.

Haven't you seen all the full page congratulation advertisements in our local newspapers whenever these thick-skinned individuals got their easy-to-get doctorate degrees? Sometimes the President or Rector of the bogus awarding university even came to Malaysia to personally award the doctorate degree to the recipient.

When one tycoon or politician became Dr so-and-so or even Dato' Dr Who, his kawan-kawan most likely also join in, just like lemmings, to buy their titles.

These grand individuals do not deserve or need our sympathy. They are putting up a show and mortals like us just make sure that we are not conned by them, while having a good laugh.

daniel: And the ads are brought to us by (and are fattening the wallets of) two computer science students in a legitimate (to say the least!) university who quit their PhD programs. Ah, the irony of it all!

now executive president of irish ionternational university has been called Sir H Sandhu-wonder another bogus claim to hoodwing the unsupecting asians and africans as again calling himself doctorate from oxford and master from cambridge. another con degree from one of their oxford association of management and master degree from theri euro business school, cambridge ?

What is the Big Deal with the Grand Ph.D. I get a bit bored with the traditionalist anyway, and in many occasions, soem of them are rather ignorant???

The WIDY\U site states that the Grand Ph.D. is honorary, and non-academic...so why any fuss at all???

The WIDU awards the highest degrees of International PhD and the Grand PhD as honorary, non-academic, "Scientific Awards" to certain, qualifying scientist, renowned leaders, directors, and rectors of universities and related institutions. These titles are bestowed without payment, on a gratis basis, only to highly recognized and deserving individuals that have demonstrated world influence and contributions at a post-doctorate level.